You know, if I owned Escaflowne, I wouldn't have pulled it from YouTube. But that's just me.
Advancement, Episode 2: Dowsing
"Amano-sempai?" Hitomi jerked forward in her chair, hand flying to her head as if to wipe away the vision stabbing her irises. It did not dim, though: he still burned himself into her sight, wreathed in light from above which seconds later retracted, taking him with it. Around his neck something blazed with reddish light, combined its aura with the cold blue pillar surrounding him; then all the lights dwindled, reduced to sparkles, and finally faded from view entirely. A strange occurrance--yet not one to which she was a stranger. How many times had she herself been privy to the same phenomenon?
Sitting back again, she took a deep breath and tried to think the vision through. It could be, she figured, perfectly symbolic--after all, wasn't he leaving to join his father in England soon? Her mind associated traveling between far-off places with such pillars of light, and thus when compelled to show her his departure it...
Oh, what was she doing? She'd never analyzed a vision before; they came true at face value every time. There was no denying it, then: her friend either soon would be or already was on his way to the planet she'd visited in just such a way a year ago. But why? Worry stabbed her gut and twisted it. Gaea was hardly a safe place under any circumstances, and they probably were still reeling in wake of the war. Who knew how they'd treat yet another mysterious stranger?
Grabbing her phone from her desk, she dialed his number. If the vision was a premonition and not concurrent, he deserved to at least be warned of what might happen to him. But would he believe her? He'd dismissed earlier tales of Gaea as little more than a romantic dream...
"Hello? Mrs. Amano? It's Hitomi. Is...oh. He went out? I see. Thank you. Do you know where he was...you don't? All right.
"Um." She swallowed heavily, aware of the woman on the other line's curiosity at her strange behavior and unsure how to phrase her next thought, but feeling she had a duty to speak out anyway. "Mrs. Amano, this may sound strange, but...if he doesn't come home today, don't get too worried. I think I know where he's going. There are good people there. He'll be fine." She had to believe it. She had to believe he would meet up with Van or Allen or someone she knew and who would look after him. She'd been incredibly lucky in that aspect of her journey: never once had her caretakers abandoned her to flounder in the alien culture and world. "So just...just keep believing he'll return and you'll see him again soon enough." Not giving the woman time to reply, Hitomi hung up, then immediately dialed a different number.
"Yukari. Yukari, pick up the phone..." Sighing deeply, Hitomi closed her eyes and prayed to the latent powers tying her world and the one she now could see floating in the sky. Please, let someone look after Amano-sempai for Yukari and me. Don't leave him all alone on Gaea without help. Let there be someone there to watch out for him until they can get him home.
"Look, Yukari," she said into the receiver, and her voice shook despite herself. "It's about Amano-sempai."
ooooooooo
Head bowed and staring at his hands, Susumu sat in silence, mind trying to process everything the men in black cloaks--Madoushi, he corrected himself, they call themselves Madoushi--had told him. This Gaea place has been here for centuries and we can't see it, but they can see Earth, which they call the Mystic Moon...their last Emperor was from Earth, so they automatically assume I've been sent to fulfill the same function; that's awfully superstitious for people who pride themselves on their science...this pendant has the power to--what was it? Change fate? What proof do they have that fate even exists? The most disconcerting thing about the whole affair, additionally, nagged the corners of his thought process--he was sure Hitomi had told him something about this place, had been here--hazily he thought he might have even seen her leave--seen her leave twice, in exactly the same way he had left the street--but he couldn't fit all the pieces together in his head sensibly. Something was missing. No...something had been rewritten.
"Are you all right, my Lord?" one of the Madoushi, a repellant man with glasses perched atop his long yet bulbous nose, asked in concern. "Can we do anything for you?"
"You can get me home," Susumu replied, looking up. "I'm sorry, but I really don't think you have the right man. I can't be your Emperor. And there are people back on Ea--back on the Mystic Moon who need me. I have to get back."
"But Lord!" protested a bearded Madoushi. "Would you desert Zaibach in her hour of need so callously? Would you let her be ripped apart by carrion?"
"That's right, my Emperor. The alliance will be the death of our people if you do not stand up to them. Divided as we are now, we cannot hold together for long. One by one, the provinces will fall to their conquerors and the people will suffer for a war which we did not cause."
Sighing, Susumu realized that he would not be getting help from this corner of the planet. And what they said...were things really so bad? Had he really landed in a ruined country?
"What happened?" he asked, crossing his arms and sitting back to listen.
The eldest Madoushi took upon himself the burden of relaying the tragedy. "Our last ruler, the Emperor Dornkirk, was a brilliant man with a glowing vision of an ideal future. He made, as a method of attaining this future, several foreign policy decisions which were blatantly misread by all other parties. The other nations of Gaea did not share his peaceful sentiments. They allied against us, and on the field of battle unleashed the most terrible weapon yet seen on the continent. Then they had the gall to blame us for the war and heaped horrible war debts upon us, dividing our country into provinces to lord over."
"They claim they wish to help us rebuild," spat the bearded Madoushi. "In reality they are profiting at our expense."
"The machines Emperor Dornkirk built to bring about his ideal future have been reconstructed behind our enemies' backs," the eldest continued. "There is a simple way for you to see our plight, and to prove to yourself that you are worthy of leading us. You need only activate the Destiny Prognostication Engine again."
Reactivate the what? "What sort of a thing is this Destiny Prog--this machine?" Susumu asked, frowning.
The Madoushi--all of them--smiled slowly. "Come, Majesty, and see."
ooooooo
"Van-sama."
Turning, he saw General Adelphos regarding him curiously. The young king couldn't blame the man; after all, it wasn't every day one walked down a hallway in the royal Asturian palace and saw a shirtless boy with one leg out the window about to drop to the pavement below. Retracting his leg and pulling his red shirt back on, Van blushed under his mop of dark hair. "General, I--"I what? Was about to sprout wings? He'd hate me if he knew--if he doesn't already know.
"Never mind that." The general waved away the oddity of Van's original position. "There's something I think you should know. I wanted to tell you first, to give you time to think it over before those bastards in that meeting room get wind of this and choke on their own lungs." Van smiled, but only fleetingly. "I just received word from some--associates in the capital. They claim, odd as it sounds, that a new Emperor has descended from the Mystic Moon."
So it hadn't been Hitomi. Van's heart had already flown out that window in pursuit of the girl; it plummeted to the ground and slunk back to the pit of his stomach, where it sat in brooding, recalcitrant silence, distracting his mind from being able to focus on what the general had just said. "...Oh," he said finally, for lack of a better comment. "Well, excuse me then. " He needed to tell Allen not to start announce his absence...
"Van-sama, wait!" Adelphos reached out to catch the boy but stopped himself at the last minute. "I don't know if the visitor has been sent for my country or not, or even what sort of person he is. While I've no doubt the Madoushi have the empire's best interests at heart, I have no stomach for grand experimentation and plotting. They wish for me to speak with him, and I intend to do so immediately. But I would like you by my side. You have had dealings with the Mystic Moon before."
Van had his suspicions about the man's motives, but he wasn't about to refuse a look at any man claiming to be Zaibach's Emperor. What kind of a monster would make a claim like that after what had happened a year ago? If he was going to be fighting again so soon, at least he could get an early look at the enemy.
"Fair enough," he agreed, rubbing his thumb on the pommel of his sword hilt. The scar on his thumb from when he'd bound himself to his Energist abraded against his glove; would he have to don that white armor so soon after putting it to sleep? He'd had enough of war! Van cursed the new so-called Emperor, sight unseen, for threatening the peace his people had bought so dearly. For undoing the action for which his brother had given his life.
Adelphos smiled, or attempted something akin to a smile. "Thank you, Van-sama. I hope that this new development will only further the goodwill between Zaibach and the rest of Gaea."
Sure you do...Van liked and respected the Zaibach general. There was a world of difference between like and trust.
ooooooooo
"What the...I can see something!" Pendant glowing on his chest, Susumu gaped into the telescope attached to the late and often unlamented Dornkirk's gargantuan masterpiece of engineering. He'd climbed into the machine more to placate the Madoushi than anything else. It had never occurred to him that the thing might actually work.
"Perhaps it would be best, for your first experiment, to wait for General Adelphos to contact you," suggested the eldest Madoushi. "He can better explain our neighbors' current treachery."
A general? Susumu had a feeling that once he talked to this man, he'd be stuck in this country. Presenting himself to a general as the supposed new Emperor of Zaibach--how would he talk himself out of that? Polite acquiescence could only go so far. He wondered what the denizens of Gaea had accused Kanzaki of being. During her stay here, if he was placing the time of year right from the snatches of hazy recollections, the emperor would have still been alive...
"Who killed the last emperor?" he asked as a way of passing time (and hopefully leading to a well-defended denial of the position).
The Madoushi averted their eyes, flinching visibly. "Folken," one finally spat. "Traitor."
"He was once one of us."
"He grew too proud and wormed his way into the emperor's favor, only to turn on him."
"What happened to him?" Susumu asked, one eye still focused halfheartedly on his telescope but the other fixed on the men below him. All they had to say was that this Folken was still at large, and he would have the the valid excuse he needed...
"He died," the Madoushi replied, smiles creeping onto their already twisted faces. "In this very room."
Shivering, Susumu decided waiting for a good excuse was a waste of valuable time and turned his attention to trying to dislodge his body from the machine, but a voice booming from the sphere above the telescope demanded his immediate attention.
"Well? Hello?"
He peered through the telescope. Now his vision was completely obscured by the image of a man, a few years younger than the Madoushi, dressed in red armor. A tanned young man stood to his side, visibly uncomfortable with the situation. Something about boy seemed familiar, but Susumu focused on the armored man instead.
"Hello? General Adelphos?"
"Yes," the man conceded slowly. "And you are?"
"Amano Susumu," he replied. "I'm, um, from the Mystic Moon and..."
The man choked. "You?...You're the..."
Susumu smiled despite himself. "Unfortunately, yes." Oh, now you've done it... "Though if you'll pardon my saying this, I'd rather not be. I have a home and friends back on the Mystic Moon that I need to get back to. I'm sorry to let you all down, but..."
"Hitomi Kanzaki," the boy interrupted suddenly. Adelphos turned to him in shock, as did Susumu, hope thrilling in his chest. The boy knew Hitomi! That meant...
"Yes, I know her, she's one of my closest friends. Did you know her?"
"Yes. This is hers." The boy held up a red pendant. "She gave it to me. How'd you get yours?"
"I found it," Susumu began. "In my mother's jewelry box."
"Your mother?" The Madoushi clustered to the railing separating them from Susumu's machine. "How did she come to have a pendant of Atlantis?"
Atlantis? Oh, now this was really getting to be too much...but it meshed with something Hitomi had said...
"How does the pendant work?" he asked the boy on the other end, now totally ignoring the general. "Can I use it to get home?"
"Your majesty, do not listen to him!" The boy's voice, like the general's, was broadcast throughout the room, and the Madoushi did not like what they were hearing. "That is Van Fanel, King of Fanelia, one of Zaibach's enemies!"
"Well, he's with one of Zaibach's generals," Susumu retorted, turning to them for a second. "That's all the reason I need to trust him. Now, Van-sama..."
"Wish," the boy replied simply; the Madoushi sputtered and Adelphos looked over curiously, apparently intrigued with the way this encounter was playing out. "Wish with all your heart and what you desire will happen. You can also look for things with the pendant, but I suggest just leaving."
"Van-sama!" rebuked the general. Susumu, however, smiled.
"Thank you, Van-sama. Very much. I'll tell Kanzaki--Hitomi--that I saw you. Ah...why did you mention her?" He'd never given an explanation, had he?
"You were with her when I met her," the boy replied reluctantly. "On the Mystic Moon." I was? The sooner he was back home, the better.
"I see. Well, thank you again. General Adelphos, I apologize for taking up your valuable time and that I cannot serve your country in the position your colleagues evidently wish me to assume. But I assure you--I am not an ideal candidate for Emperor. This is all probably for the best."
"Thank you," breathed the general with evident sincerity. "Best wishes for your journey home, Amano Susumu of the Mystic Moon. End transmission." And the scene winked out.
Ignoring the clamoring men below him, Susumu sat back in the chair and closed his eyes, focusing his mind on the pendant around his neck. I want to go home. Take me home, to Yukari and Hitomi and, yes, my parents. I can't spend the last weeks before I leave Japan forever on some weird other world. Take me back to the Mystic Moon. Back to Earth. Back to Japan. Back to my home. Holding the wish in his mind, he waited to be engulfed in light again.
Nothing happened. Frustrated, he tried again. Take me back to Japan. Take me to my home again. I want to go home. Home. Home. Home. Home. Still nothing. Kanzaki, your friend made this sound so easy...
The pendant stayed dark. Growing angry, Susumu scowled down at the Madoushi. "Well?" he asked. "Do you know anything about this? You mentioned Atlantis. You know what this thing is. Could you help, please?"
"Perhaps, my Lord," one of the Madoushi offered, "the pendant senses the uncertainty in your soul. Perhaps you do not really wish to return. You are meant to be here, Emperor Susumu. Think of what your coronation will do for the people of Zaibach! You will be granting an entire country new hope."
He opened his mouth to make a reply, then reconsidered. The man obviously had an agenda of his own, but...did that automatically make him wrong? "You're quite the romantic, Kanzaki." He'd said that to her...had he?...when she related her story to him. Did the romantic in him want to stay around, help these people? Hitomi had been gone for months and yet woke up on the same day...once...yet he remembered her being missing as well...what was wrong with his mind? Would he or wouldn't he return to Earth on the same day he left?
Sighing heavily, he forced himself to say it. "Well, you win for now. Looks like I can't get back right away."
"Thank you, my Lord," replied the eldest Madoushi. "We shall alert the people. Do you wish to contact General Adelphos again at the summit and inform him of your decision?"
"No, whatever he's doing he can probably better do without worrying about my permission. Just let him know I'm staying but for the time being he can do as he will, provided he reports back to me upon his return." Oh, what was he saying? He was eighteen years old, for goodness' sake. He couldn't run an empire. Running a track team was one thing, an entire country quite another. Susumu got the feeling Adelphos or whoever had been running the empire prior to his arrival would still make most of the day-to-day decisions. But if he could help the people in other ways...
"This pendant, supposing it works," he began slowly. "What are some things the empire needs that I could get with it?"
ooooooooo
The three boys sat in their cell, eyes dull and seemingly lifeless. It was the first day since their awakenings that the cloaked men had not visited and inspected them, made them demonstrate their athleticism and swordsmanship, but they did not notice. They were waiting for someone else, someone they did not know how they remembered, but they knew they lived for his sake alone. Until he arrived to give their lives meaning, they could only sit in silence.
The door creaked open; three heads--two blond and one brunette--swiveled apathetically to see who was coming. It was one of the men in the cloaks, the bald one with the glasses.
He gave them a smile and spoke the words that would bring his new experiments to complete consciousness. "He is coming."
ooooooooo
"What do you want with a girl from another country?" Susumu asked suspiciously, peering through his telescope in an attempt to find the city called "Palas" anyway. Picture what you want to see in your mind...well, they say she's sixteen years old and the sister of a prominent knight...she's probably in the palace...she's blond with blue eyes...
"For most of her life, she lived here and served in our military," replied the eldest Madoushi. "Asturia stole her from us after a traumatic battle in which her entire unit was brutally massacred. The monstrosity of the so-called alliance knows no bounds. Her triumphant return...it would do the people good to see their army's star again."
"You let a woman fight?" Susumu was slightly taken aback; though hardly a chauvinist, he still harbored some admittedly old-fashioned ideas about the "gentler sex" that no lecture from Yukari could purge from his values.
The older man gave him a strange smile. "Not exactly." He refused to elaborate, however, opting to instead let Susumu focus all his attention on locating the young woman in question.
"Found her!" At first glance, she reminded him of Hitomi--she had the same short hair--but he quickly decided the similarity ended there. Her eyes had more dreams floating in them. Panning his vision across the room she stood in, he sucked in a breath. She was in the company of the boy who had tried to help him earlier, Van Fanel, who now had a girl with pink hair and--was that a tail?--hanging on his arm. Someone else had apparently just left; the door was swinging. The girl stared after whoever had just run out. "Brother?" she asked worriedly.
Well, if he was going to contact her, it was probably best to do so before her brother got back. "Celena?" he began, not entirely certain what he was going to ask. "Celena Schezar? Can you hear me?"
She started; her head whipped around the room. Good. He'd made contact. Now what?
"What should I ask her?" he in turn asked the Madoushi, uncertain what they really wanted of the young woman. "If she wants to come back to Zaibach?"
"Best not to, Lord," came the elder's reply as he watched the girl try to figure out where the voice had come from. Van and his long-eared friend seemed disturbed by her actions, but deaf to the voice that had called her name. "Bring her here. We wish to speak with her in person, without the interference of those who pretend to be her friends."
That would be a really brilliant start to his supposed reign--kidnapping the sister of a knight from another country. But if she was really as miserable as the Madoushi had made her sound...and it would be a good way to test the pendant...maybe it just needed to get warmed up. He'd bring the girl to him, not let her out of his sight to make sure the Madoushi didn't mistreat her in any way, then send her back to her family with a formal apology and be on his own way out. You're using her, and you know it, accused his conscience. You can't do that. Not to some innocent girl. For all you know, you'll start another war! This is none of your business. Get out of that machine and away from these men!
Oh, and then where would he go? He was a foreigner here. As long as he stayed in the palace, he'd have help acclimating. No, he couldn't just spirit the girl away, but...what if, even though reaching Earth had failed, he could transport himself across Gaea? He could talk to her and Van in person...figure out what to do from there...
"I'm going," he announced. The Madoushi set up an immediate outcry. He groaned. "Oh, fine. I'll try your way. But if this doesn't work, I will go myself."
oooooooooo
The minute Celena jerked her head around, calling to a voice only she could hear, Van pulled his arm free of Merle's grip and wrapped his hand around the hilt of his sword. With the other hand he grabbed Hitomi's pendant, eyes darting around the room for the source of the problem. It had been a year, but he still felt uncomfortable around Allen's sister, amnesia or no amnesia. Allen had been more than willing to believe nothing bad would ever happen to Celena as long as he was around. Van subscribed to a belief system with striking parallels to paranoia.
"Who's there? Brother?" Celena asked. Merle slunk into a corner, nervous. "Van-sama..." she began.
"Quiet, Merle." He focused on the pendant. What's wrong? Show me the problem. Show me...
Slowly, faintly, Celena became outlined with a soft pink light in his vision. A voice drifted into Van's ears as well, and he listened. It was familiar...Allen? No, though it was similar.
"Celena, the Madoushi are here with me. They want to know if you want to come back. They miss you, Celena. The people of Zaibach miss you."
"I was in...Zaibach?" Celena's eyes glazed over as she tried to remember. "I don't know...Madoushi..." Thinking, she bit her lip harder than she'd intended to, and a bead of blood blossomed from the small wound. Curious, she wiped it off and stared at the blood; then, clutching her mouth, she fell suddenly to her knees and screamed.
Instantly Van was at her side, shaking her by the shoulders and yelling her name while focusing his mind solely on the pendant. No! Don't take her back, whoever you are! Damn you, Zaibach...He remembered where he'd heard that voice before, and it sickened him. Hitomi's friend? I thought he'd gone home! What's he doing, actively aiding Zaibach? Bastard! Celena, no! Allen'll die if you go back...
"Van-sama?" Merle whimpered, watching wide-eyed from the corner.
"Merle!" he commanded for the second time that day. "Find Allen!" Nodding shakily, she ran off, dropping to all fours in her haste. Van turned back to the quivering Celena and wished with all his might. Stay Allen's sister! Stay Celena Schezar!
"Celena? Celena, what's wrong? Is he hurting you? Celena!" A brilliant flash of light filled the room, and when it cleared the boy Van remembered from the Mystic Moon wrenched Celena from him, throwing him an indignant glare. "What were you doing to her!" he demanded.
"Give her back!" Van drew his sword but could not attack for fear of indeed hurting Celena, whose shivers seemed to be lessening in the presence of this warm, supportive man. Looking up into familiar blue eyes, she gave a weak smile. "Brother?" she asked quietly; the young man did not appear to hear her query but hugged her tighter to him all the same.
"Put that sword down. Can't you see you're scaring her?" The Mystic Moon boy grabbed his own pendant and closed his eyes. Between his fingers, light began to slip.
"NO!" Van screamed as Allen ran into the room, Merle hot on his heels. "Celena!" the knight cried, running towards his sister, then froze in his tracks.
Blue eyes met blue eyes, the same face stared at itself across the room, framed by blond hair on one side and brown on the other. Celena herself stared bewilderedly first at the man in the doorway, then at the one holding her in his arms. Time seemed to stop as the two blinked at each other, mirror-images contemplating the other in shock and confusion.
Van made a dash for Celena, trying to take advantage of the young man's momentary distraction, but the brunette recovered from the surprise and vanished, along with the young woman he held, into thin air just as Van's sword sliced harmlessly through where his head had been only moments before. In a fit of frustration, Van threw the sword across the room; it skittered across the floorboards and he stalked over to retrieve it, shaking in anger. Damn it. Damn it all...now what? He said he was going to go home...I have to follow him. But he could not calm down enough to channel his emotions into the pendant; it remained dark and cold.
For his part, Allen sank to his knees, normally pale face ashen as realization slowly sank in. "Celena..." he gasped. "Not again..."
"Allen!" Van helped the man stand up again but ended up supporting him. Embarrassed, he looked away as Merle took the knight's other arm and together they walked him back towards the Caeli headquarters. They'd gotten halfway down the hall when Allen, shrugging them both off, straightened.
"No, I'm fine...thank you both for your concern, but I can walk on my own." He gave them a weak, trembling smile. "Please don't trouble yourselves on my account."
"You don't look fine," observed Merle saucily. "Honestly, you're as bad as Van-sama sometimes." Van let the insult slide. "Anyway, Van-sama will get Celena back soon enough. Won't you?"
Van looked away, ashamed but hiding it. "I'll try," he promised. "Allen...I'm sorry."
"It's too late already, isn't it?" Allen asked quietly, turning his eyes towards the window and out at the world beyond. "There's nothing we can do now."
"You don't know--" Van began awkwardly, not comfortable with his role as consoler, when a faint flash of light illuminated the horizon, then faded. He joined Allen in staring out the window. Merle knelt and propped her chin on the sill. Together they watched the light flash and vanish once more.
"Zaibach," said Allen unnecessarily. "Celena."
Van wanted to say something brilliant, or wise, or at the very least non-patronizing. But he wasn't a diplomat or a philosopher; he didn't have a way with words that could tap into emotions and make things better. He was a warrior. So he said the only thing a warrior in his circumstance could.
"Allen." He put his hand on the knight's shoulder, forced their eyes to meet. "I swear on my honor as the King of Fanelia...Zaibach and their new Emperor will pay."
oooooooo
a/n: Do I really need to say what happens next chapter?
Oh, and I checked a map: if the light in Zaibach was very, very bright and extended very, very high, you probably could indeed see it from Palas. There's probably more I could say about stuff, but I'm tired and want to go to bed.
Thanks to everyone who read and/or reviewed!